Government requires strong partnership-To produce results (Sat Sept 12, 2009)

GOVERNMENT requires private partnership to produce results of a growing economy, clean environment as well as strong and prosperous communities.
Specific areas where such a collaboration was needed are the building of inter-city highway, rehabilitation of the rail network, development of education facilities and provision of health and social services.
In a statement read on his behalf at the opening of the second Annual National Public Private Partnership (PPP) conference in Accra last Thursday, the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama said Government faced monumental challenges in the sourcing of adequate capital to undertake those projects.
“The traditional domestic and external borrowing impacts negatively on the country’s debt sustainability and creditworthiness. Government, therefore, has to strike a balance between debt sustainability and solving the overreaching problem of infrastructure development”, he pointed out.
The two-day conference which was on the theme: “Public Private Partnership (PPP) for Social Services and Infrastructure” has the aim of increasing and deepening participants’ understanding and awareness of the PPP concept and how it could help in the rapid execution and growth of the country’s infrastructure. It was sponsored by the World Bank.
Mr Mahama said the Government had made commitments to the people of Ghana which put its under obligation to invest in modern infrastructure and social services adding,“If we are going to make these investments, we need to rethink the traditional methods of funding projects through tax revenues, domestic borrowing, external loans, and donor support”.
“We must look beyond the box, and look to reinventing the box”, he stressed.
The Vice-President observed that to build a better Ghana with a strong economic foundation, the country needed to create a Ghanaian infrastructure advantage which he said required strategic investments in projects designed to produce results in areas of national importance.
A Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Fiifi Kwettey, said Ghana, like other African countries faced a significant infrastructure gap, adding that the country’s current medium-term annual infrastructure gap was estimated at US$2.5 billion.
He reiterated the fact that financing the gap would required funds from a range of sources which included PPPs.
The Chairman for function, Professor Newman Kwadwo Kusi said the conference came at an appropriate time when the country needed to either devised a new approach to the problem of social services and infrastructure delivery or invite increased economic stagnation and national instability.
Prof. Kusi who is also the acting Chief Director of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, noted that the transformation of the Ghanaian economy to create jobs, generate income and reduced poverty, was the single most important challenge and stressed that underpinning that challenge was needed to provide and sustain adequate and appropriate social service infrastructure.